Kim Cowman: Appropriate load factor selection can be a concern. This often requires special approval from the local fire official, but also needs to account for notification of the staff working in these spaces. Simon Ubhi: Special needs for fire alarm notification in animal spaces within labs - often need to eliminate horns/speakers and strobes within the animal housing and workspaces because the noise and light created from these could affect the animals in a way that impacts the research being done. Toby White: Many new state-of-the-art buildings include atria as part of the aesthetic appeal of the building. Some of these atria have taken on unique shapes that require more advanced fire and smoke modeling to establish smoke management criteria. For space efficiency and cost purposes, we often end up with long, narrow atria with incredibly short smoke reservoirs at the top. Without providing a place for smoke to collect, the smoke exhaust systems must be sized to more rapidly remove smoke. Fundamentally, a good exhaust system also has sufficient makeup air located low within the atrium and the makeup air quantity and speed of introduced makeup air become the main design challenges. Nobody wants to see 500 square feet of makeup air louvers on their main level, so we have to be creative with where this comes from, whether by actuated doors or exterior wall panels that open to provide the required makeup air at a reasonably controlled velocity. From time-to-time some component of the design is out of prescriptive compliance, but can be validated through performance-based fire and smoke modeling to see suitable solutions meeting the intent of the Code. Courtesy: LEO A DALY, Noto Consulting Group LLC, DLR Group, Cannon Design, RMF Engineering Inc., Henderson Engineers, Arup What are some of the unique challenges regarding fire/life safety system design that you’ve encountered for such projects? How have you overcome these challenges? Rattenbury, PE, LEED AP, Vice President, Cannon Design, Boston Luke Richards, PE, Project Engineer, RMF Engineering Inc., Raleigh, North Carolina Simon Ubhi, PE, LEED AP BD+C, Principal, Henderson Engineers, Los Angeles Toby White, PE, LEED AP, Associate – Boston Fire and life Safety Practice Leader, Arup, Boston.
Noto, PE, LEED AP, Owner, Noto Consulting Group LLC, Roswell, Georgia Coral Pais, PE, BEMP, LEED AP BD+C, WELL AP, Mechanical Engineer, DLR Group, Cleveland, Ohio John M. Kim Cowman, PE, LEED AP, National Director of Engineering, LEO A DALY, Omaha, Nebraska Daniel S.